rec.autos.simulators

Since most of my *** is spent in either flight simulators (Falcon 3.0, F15
Strike Eagle III, 1942: PAW, etc.) or car racing games (NASCAR Racing, IndyCar
Racing and World Circuit), both of which demand quite of bit of computer
horsepower along with a FAST video card, I thought I'd ask here for advice on
my purchasing decision.

Basically, I'm not looking to spend over $250 (and that's stretching seeing as
I'm a job-less, starving college student) but I'm mostly interested in DOS
performance for games such as those mentioned above.  Although I use Windows,
I don't find it too slow on screen updates.

So what are you flight-sim/racing fanatics (notice, I cross-posted to both
groups) using as a video card?

E-mail replies as well as posts would be appreciated.
                                                                  ...
                                                                 (O O)
+-------------------------------------+----------------------oOO--( )--OOo----+
| "For long you live and high you fly | Her face is cracked from smiling,     |
|  But only if you ride the tide      | All the fears that she's been hiding. |
|  And balanced on the biggest wave   |                   - Led Zeppelin      |
|  You race towards an early grave."  |=======================================|

+-------------------------------------+=======================================+

Don't make the mistake I made, I traded my C/Logic card for a
MATROX MGA Ultima 2Mb VL-Bus card in my 486DX2-66. The Windows
performance is lightning-fast - so I expected good DOS performance.
Not so !

Flight Sim 5 runs with what appears to be < 10 frames per second,
Indy Car Racing struggles if I set the minimum frame rate > 15fps,
and F1GP reports 160%+ CPU usage with texture mapping turned off !

I believe S3 based cards also suffer from similar problems.

Basically, the C/Logic cards are cheap, offer VESA 1.2
compatability (for FLT SIM 5 etc. etc.) and are pretty fast for the
money. I don't know about costs in the states, but they're about 65
uk pounds for a 1Mb VLB version here.

Hope this helps ...

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I'm told Et4000 cards are also good DOS performers.

-- Gizmo van der HOF

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Samppa
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|   Samuli Takala  |E-Mail:             | WWW: http://www.jyu.fi/~tamasa/     |

Yep, same... NASCAR (great tip, folks! Never would have found it
without you) FS5, Falcon 3.0, same.

yep.

Followups with Cc to original, fine for me.

Great cards, which ones?

[snip]

I have a #9GXE64 VLB w/1MB DRAM and its DOS performance is pretty good.
(i486/DX266)  My 3dbench is 52.6.  I can run F1GP with everything on very
smoothly...  It goes for around $179 (at Fry's).
-Scott

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    University of California, Davis                                
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I have a Hercules Dynamite Pro VL based on the Tseng 4000 W32P, and
it gives excellent frame rates, both in DOS and Windows.

Jim

I don't know if its THE fastest, but I know it's fast. Faster still is
the VRAM version.

Just a little note about these graphics cards. I was in the market for
one not too long ago and I went through the same things that everyone
else is going through trying to decide which was best. I first bought a
Hercules Dynamite Pro VLB and I must say that cards was FAST. However, I
wanted to get 800x600 using 3DAGS with ATP so I needed a S3 chip standard
instead. I looked around and most of the fast S3 cards that magazines
reviewed were for PCI. However, the Diamond Stealth VLB was the fastest
VLB that I saw (there are newer cards now, however). That fit the bill
and I bought one. (By the way, I spoke with one of our analysts here in
the firm and he said that the Tseng ET4000 chip was old news and should
be phased out. He said that the S3, being newer, was a much better chip.)

The Diamond Stealth VLB 2 Meg Dram was fast, but not as fast as that
Dynamite Pro VLB. However, when I activated the video accelerator in my
Netroom 3.0 the video speed shot up like there was no tomorrow. I tested
it and my system, a '486/66 VLB, was equivalent to a Pentium 20mhz. Sure,
it's not a Pentium 60mhz but neither was the price of the unit.

Well, anyway, I would recommend the Diamond Stealth VLB but with 2 megs
VRAM instead of DRAM if your pocketbook can spare that much cash.